I’m not entirely persuaded that The Unconsoled is dark, though. Its action is occluded, certainly, but I’m not sure that its conclusions are especially grim: Ryder remains convinced of the uplifting power of art and of his presence; the town experiences a certain measure of local aesthetic accomplishment (Stephan Hoffman wows the crowd if not his parents); several storylines are resolved: the Hoffmans’ marriage; the Brodsky/Collins affair; the Gustav/Sophie mess.

Most importantly, though, I think Ishiguro leaves us with a sense that our narrow little lives are not ultimately irrelevant: whatever odd, insignificant obsessions we have are no more odd or more insignificant than those of the rest of the world. Ryder can leave the town with his mind more or less clear, because success and failure have little impact on the larger shape of his or anyone else’s existence.

On a side note, I just today began Pnin (trying to have a short Russian dessert to resolve my two-month War and Peace feast), which feels for all the world like an antecedent to The Unconsoled: incompetent artisan goes to a strange town and is waylaid many times on his way to accomplishing a comparative obscure goal.

Parodic? I think I’m more comfortable with “absurdist and surrealist,” which Ma seems to use at the end somewhat interchangeably with “parodic.” Parodic to me would imply a direct correspondence with something that’s being parodied, and I’m just not sure what that object would be.

What I find interesting about Ma’s take is that it starts to ask why Ishiguro’s novels seem to demand a belletristic reading like the one you’re worried about. I think that’s an important question to keep in mind, but not one necessarily connected to a particular subject position. In other words, examining why these texts lend themselves to particular types of readings should serve alongside the readings themselves as an important component of criticism, if that makes sense. I’m not sure that directly answers the question you’re worried about, but that at least is how I’m tempted to respond.

I am a little more persuaded by Ma’s reading of postethnicity in Unconsoled—although that world is nominally central European, there are no language barriers and no sense of a cultural identity beyond vague allegiance to one or another school of aesthetics. If anything, the cultural homogeneity of that context feels more American than European.

By the way, I am ecstatic that you have also read The Unconsoled. I don’t know if you flipped to the end of the Ma article, but do you buy his argument that the book is “parodic” and that its “landscape has grown unrecognizable, depressingly dark” (86)?

also, it’s hard for me to read Unconsoled as non-ethnic, since its setting seems so specifically Central European. If it’s a dreamscape, it’s the dream of someone who knows some old capitals really well.